MN90: Roy Wilkins, the Civil Rights Act and LBJ

Roy Wilkins earned his professional chops as a Twin Cities journalist. But it was as an activist and director of the NAACP, says producer Britt Aamodt, that Wilkins helped change history with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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MN90: Minnesota’s First Telegram

The first telegram was sent in the United States in 1838. Minnesota wanted to get hooked in but it had to wait for the trains to bring the telegraph west. Britt Aamodt has the history behind the first telegram sent from Minnesota.

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MN90: Hiroshima, Mr. Nier

Al Nier was a physics researcher at the University of Minnesota when he figured out how to separate the isotopes of uranium. Britt Aamodt traces the scientific discovery that, joined with other discoveries, led to the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

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MN90: Don the Gorilla

Don was one of the last lowland gorillas taken from the wild before 1973’s Endangered Species Act. Britt Aamodt remembers the gorilla who not only drew crowds at Como Zoo but also found himself the poster-primate of a magazine ad.

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MN90: The Man behind Churchill and the Guthrie Theater

Tyrone Guthrie was a noted theater director when, in 1940, he was called upon to assist England’s new prime minister. Britt Aamodt looks at a later chapter in Guthrie’s life, when he brought his philosophy of theater design and direction to Minnesota.

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MN90: A Last Toast to Company B

In 1930, on the anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, Charles Lockwood uncorked a bottle of wine and drank a toast to a roomful of empty chairs draped in black crepe. Here’s producer Britt Aamodt on a Civil War veterans’ club and its annual tradition.

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MN90: Minnesota’s First Documented AIDS Case

In 1981, Bruce Brockway wasn’t feeling well. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong. Then in June, the CDC published a report on five men in Los Angeles dead from a mysterious ailment. Britt Aamodt looks at Minnesota’s first documented AIDS case.